Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Social Justice - A Conversation
Unknown Speaker 0:00
You're listening to locally produced programming created in KU NBC Studios on public radio K, u and v. 91.5. Hi, I'm Charles Stanton. I'm on the faculty of the Honors College at UNLV. And the Boyd School of Law.
Unknown Speaker 0:18
I'm Joanna weatherald. I'm a third year law student and welcome to social justice, social
Unknown Speaker 0:22
justice, the conversation conversation.
Unknown Speaker 0:27
Good evening, everybody. And welcome back to social justice, a conversation with me, Lana Weatherall, a third year law student here at UNLV. So William S. Boyd School of Law, I'm joined alongside Professor Charles Stanton, who is also a professor at the William S. Boyd School of Law, but teaches at the Honors College at UNLV. As well, we're happy you're joining us again. Tonight, we've got a whole plethora of topics, we're mostly staying on the political side of things. And with that, I would like to have the professor open it up with our first topic.
Unknown Speaker 0:57
Yes, thank you, Lana. Well, the first topic is, has to do with Twitter. And the fact that, since the takeover of Twitter, and the elimination of a lot of jobs, and the elimination of a lot of jobs related to content, you know, verification and protection of protection of children, primarily, we're seeing a lot of inappropriate illegal stuff on Twitter, that really doesn't seem to be being addressed. And I really don't understand how this major social media network cannot regulate content in such a way that that young people are being protected. And I'm sure this is not the first time that you know, this issue has raised itself. But in one of the articles I was reading recently, there has been, there seems to be an alarming increase in it. And although I am not a computer savant, I am sure from what I do know that the people who put this stuff out, they can be taken off. It's a question of whether or not the people who run the operation have the will and the energy to do it. We're
Unknown Speaker 2:25
not even sure how many and who are running this operation? Right. All that we do know is a lot the vast majority, I would argue of people who knew how the logistics of Twitter operated ran, how they functioned, right, the inner workings of the kinds of things you and I would never begin to understand are gone. And so what do you have? You know, so the professor is mentioning that this is an issue for, you know, child sex abuse and things that are completely inappropriate, where children are concerned. But this is that's not the only issue, right? You're having copyrighted materials that are on Twitter, you're having people that were previously banned from Twitter, because of the views and the dangerous things they espoused are now back on, or there's ways to now circumvent certain features that were never circumvented. I mean, this is not Yeah, Twitter is a wholesale problem at this point. But I this is to be expected when you have a guy who doesn't know what the heck he's doing come in and replace a bunch of people who do know what the heck they're doing. This is the result. Twitter has always been kind of a cesspool in my favorite social media cesspool, let me just throw that in there. But it is a cesspool nonetheless. So I you know, when you have a cesspool go unregulated this is I'm not surprised that this is our result. Facebook's no better, but Instagram is no better. But now it's just, I'm glad Elon is a face to blame. Click because, I mean, how do you just get rid of all the people that know anything?
Unknown Speaker 3:40
Yeah. I wonder, you know, I wonder if that particular issue of protecting children is a priority with these different social media engines? Or is it something where they they give lip service to it, but it's not something that's at the top of their list. What
Unknown Speaker 4:05
I think happened with Elon is he was trying to make this larger point about like, everybody in tech is unnecessary. We over hire in tech, big tech corporations have too many needless, useless people, and let's fire him all. And, you know, his point wasn't proven. And I think unfortunately, this was just probably the most sinister result of such a stupid choice to or such a, you know, dumb point he was trying to make. So I don't think it's so much that they're trying to provide lip service, it's that this was just the most sinister result of the dumbest choice this guy could have made, unfortunately.
Unknown Speaker 4:36
You know, it is interesting, though, that in a society that, you know, basically denies women the right to have bodily autonomy, and talks about it talks about the unborn. What happens after the children are born? And what does society do to protect those children and in many ways that protection seems to be very deficient. So
Unknown Speaker 5:03
there's no protection, it's give the kid an iPad and send them on to you on Twitter. That's the protection. Yes,
Unknown Speaker 5:08
exactly. That's exactly what it is. And, of course, you know, the acceleration of this problem, because we have we have in our country, basically, an abuse problem that goes through many different organizations far beyond Twitter. And the Congress seems very low to get involved in actually trying to deal with it.
Unknown Speaker 5:36
Yeah. I mean, this is in the church. This is unfortunately, in our schools, this is in a lot of our penal institutions. This is this is all over. It's
Unknown Speaker 5:44
all over. It's all over. So that's our, that's our entrance way. Right? And then then, perhaps, in a completely different venue, very interesting article about those people who become clerks on the Supreme Court. And I always knew, of course, that there was a hierarchy, right? There's, you know, Harvard and Yale, and, you know, then Stanford, University of Chicago, Columbia, but a very fascinating article that I read, which, of course, completely knocks the idea of diversity and egalitarianism completely out of the box, right? That there's one set of standard for those people who become clerks. And the vast majority of the people who become clerks go to either Stanford, university, Chicago, Columbia, Harvard or Yale. So absolutely. So no one no one can get in. But it's even more refined than that. So you could still if you went to Harvard, Yale Law, Chicago, Stanford, Columbia, you still might not get in unless, unless you went to either Princeton, Harvard or Yale undergrad? I say you have, you had to, you know, blow through and through have to, I mean, even if you sold your soul, right to get into law school, and even if you were magna cum laude, at the top of your journal, right? It's not a guarantee, unless who did Princeton, Harvard and Yale. And what's interesting about this whole thing is that of the there's nine justices on the Supreme Court, there's three Democrats, and there's six Republicans. And eight of the nine, were clerks on the Supreme Court, eight of the nine, and the I guess, and six of them went to Harvard or Yale Law School. So so how do you how do you get any kind of diversity, diversity and all
Unknown Speaker 8:00
got taught the same common law class, they all know this, I mean, quite literally. And you know, what I just did, from personal experience, you know, UNLV, the law school that we're recording from, and the one that I go to school at, and a professor teaches that is a very middling law school, as far as rankings are concerned. There is not one of us that was the dream of clicking for this. And we know better, we know, just going out of a middling law school, that that's not even an option for us, I have never heard one of my peers. And there are a lot of my peers that have any interest or knowledge or belief that they will clerk to the Supreme Court at any point in their career. It is what it is, you know, it is very much of that, you know, that you're not the cream of the crop, and that's designed for a certain cream of the crop kid. It's sick as it is.
Unknown Speaker 8:41
But you know, you know, something, I think, I think, in many ways, how grossly unfair that
Unknown Speaker 8:49
because I would argue we have students in my this law school at UNLV, that would run circles around some of those kids at Harvard at Yale, whether that be in the courtroom or whether that be in transactional law, whether it be in a negotiation, whatever that may be. But I fully believe we have children that hear action, calm children, but we have, you know, legal professionals here that would run circles around kids in harbor near London, you know, you'll never see the light of day and the way they will Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 9:12
I mean, I've I've had the privilege of teaching here for a few years, and I have had some outstanding students, I say outstanding in every way. And it's really unfortunate because it was interesting, you know, when when you watch MSNBC, they have Professor lot Lawrence tribe on and Lawrence tribe is, you know, he's, he's like, how, what would you call him an iconic figure in the teaching of constitutional law? I love violence. I was a brilliant guy and all the rest of it. And he comes along and, you know, he taught he taught all these different people. He taught the Attorney General and he taught the sub Attorney John All right. But in a sense, though, it's like an exam, it's it's like an exclusivity, it's like that maybe they should be taught by more than just one person. In other words, that the reference to to being on a course body that maybe there were other voices that need to be heard on the subjects. I when I was going to law school, it was open to a woman that's out there. And she was a torts professor. And her teacher was Prosser
Unknown Speaker 10:38
frost writes the book.
Unknown Speaker 10:42
He writes the books and his, you know, it goes back to maybe the Middle Ages, you know, but it really it has very little to do with with, I just say diversity, but differences of opinion, getting people in there, from different schools from different from different upbringings, right? Because
Unknown Speaker 11:02
there isn't, you know, I don't want to make a sweeping generalization here, there are very few of the Supreme Court justices that went to Harvard or Yale in history that I think had to work a part time job to put themselves through that had to, you know, have boots on the ground that had to know other people that had to shake hands, they would have never otherwise been shake if their father didn't introduce them to him. You know, I think there was a lot of Yeah, obviously, kids that go to Harvard and Yale and students I go to Harvard and Yale are very different, they have to be different by the nature of what that program demands, and by the nature of how you have to get in than what I think even the average person ever could be and ever is capable of. And so how was that representative? How was that a diverse body? If they're all from there? I yeah, I think the professor makes a great and valid point. And it's hard, it's interesting to consider that the vast majority of the people sitting on the, you know, most important court in our country, we're probably all taught the exact same con law class are probably all taught in the exact same way from the exact same books in the exact same manner. And yeah, yeah, how are we going to ever invoke meaningful change? If they don't know any different? Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 12:03
yeah. And that we, that leads a course into this into this other topic we're going to talk about today, which is the College Board's. And the College Board's for a number of years was trying to put together an advanced placement course, on African American Studies. And they had basically the input of so many people, scholars in who are experts in the field, right. Henry Louis Gates, that there were there were a lot of, and there was a lot of protests against this from from the, shall we say, the conservative, the conservative wing of America. And what they've actually done Now basically, is basically they've taken the meat out of out of the course, they're still going to teach, they're going to still teach the course. But there's a lot of aspects of the course that they were going to teach, that have been removed. And it's very disturbing to me, because the College Board's is about education. And it's about learning. And it's about history. History is the most important subject, I think that that can ever be taught. Because it's only to the to the teaching of history, the true history, that we know what we originated from, what was deficient in our, our growth, and what can be done now, to make our country better, so that we can learn from these, we can learn from the mistakes that we made. And I think that we have in our country, as I've said this before, a sense of denialism, that the things that went on didn't occur, that, you know, we you can say, well, you know, this scholar can't teach about a certain part of the of the racial of the racial dynamic in our country. But that doesn't change anything. I
Unknown Speaker 14:10
think denialism is part of it. But I think a certain part of it is fear that if the kids that are taking these advanced placement courses, these 1617 year old kids start putting themselves in a position where they are understanding at length what our country is and was capable of, oh, then you have kids that are a little more apathetic to this country heading into college, then you have kids that want to study a little bit more or try to make affect real change or try I mean, much like what happened to me who went to the most liberal college in America, right? All the sudden, you see, oh, this isn't land of the free home of the brave like we've been espoused in our public school systems forever and forever. You start learning that oh, we're a lot different than what we're sold as, and this is, I mean, we're a sinister, malicious country with god awful history, and they don't want me saying those words right. The Republican Party would not like a kid like me who didn't take critical race theory classes to feel that way about their Country. And that's I think denialism part of it sure, but fear, fear that we could understand and then want to change and then affect real change, right? Because if the smartest kids in the country are then understanding what we're capable of, we will no longer want to be capable of it. And I think it's, it's as much denialism it is, is it is fear that the smartest people in this country will then try to affect real change. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 15:19
And I think I think too, I think it too, it has an economic dimension to it. In other words, that if you teach the true history, then obviously, you want to make things better. You want to remediate the situation, involving whatever programs could be used to do that. But if you don't teach the history, then you don't need special
Unknown Speaker 15:44
operations, if you never were taught they needed, right. And there's,
Unknown Speaker 15:47
there's really no need for diversity. There's no need for any of these social programs. Because everybody just basically grew up the same way, even though we know from all objective fact that that was not the case. But it's almost like creating a new history, that things were good. It's like what what was that Ben Carson line that the slaves came here for opportunity, right? Come on. Yeah. But this this, right, this is what this is what you're dealing with. And that, of course, is going to tie into something. You know, Ron, and I can talk about now and that's the new college.
Unknown Speaker 16:26
So I think we I tried to touch on this two weeks ago, and the situation was still very fluid. And I was very raw and emotional about it. But now sort of the dust has settled and it's become a lot more clear about what's going on here. The college I went to, it's called the new College of Florida. I believe the reason I am well spoken, I believe the reason I am successful, I believe the reason I'm sitting here talking on this radio program, and the way I am today is because I went to that university is I believe wholeheartedly in the education I received and what it taught me and the person that made me, Ron DeSantis is trying to tear that school down a hostile takeover is the only way to describe it. The school that took a very, very poor kid from a single mom and turned her into a lawyer is no longer going to exist. And it's it's heartbreaking, right? And unfortunately, new college has suffered from a reputation that it maybe doesn't deserve as being sort of this hippie dippie. Haven for misfits. And that's not necessarily what it is what it is, is a community of a lot of gay people. A lot of people that have come from different backgrounds, backgrounds like mine, where they don't have a ton of money. But they're intellectually curious. And they want to know more about why they are the way they are, why the way the world works. And new college doesn't have grades. So it suffers from this idea that we don't do anything serious academically because we don't have a grading system where you're getting A's and B's. And Ron DeSantis has taken this opportunity to take this beautiful University who has created more Fulbright Scholars purse, like, you know what straight up, I think they might have created more Fulbright Scholarships, recipients than Harvard or Yale is now making it out to be sort of the woke institution that needs to be shut down this idea that we have become a haven for critical race theory teachings and a haven for the LGBTQ to spread misinformation and to indoctrinate your kids and these professors are teaching yada yada. So that's the sort of rhetoric he's been espousing. And now he has put that rhetoric into real action. And he has put almost an entirety of the Board of Governors now is made up of I think, six individuals who are some of the most horrifying people you could possibly imagine as far as what they believe and what they have a spouse personally, Chris Rufo been the main the main, we'll say offender in this case. They have asked and, you know, I don't know where this sort of is now, but they have asked all faculty, all administrative staff to step down. The President has been removed. This female president who is just genius and act active in the community and just wonderful and has been spoken of so glowingly right she's out. So essentially, the school has been told you're done. There's very little money. It's a school that has a new College of Florida, I think has 5000 alumni and probably 800 currently enrolled. There's just not enough money or power there. And so you know, this institution will likely be taken down on the heels of it's a little too gay. It's a little too woke, and it likes black people a little too much.
Unknown Speaker 19:23
Yeah. Well, I was, I thought it was a carb numerous statement that they made about why they wanted to change the university and the three things is they don't want diversity. Okay. We're, Hey, wake up or a diverse country, right? It's not we're not back in the 1840s. We're in the 19. We're in the 2020 threes, when our country is more diverse than it ever has been right? And diversity is not an enemy diversity should be An ally, because it's only through diversity that we pull the energies and talents of all the different people who come here from all different lands that have made America what it is, that can make America even better. So that's the first thing, then the second thing they were talking about, is they want to do away with equity. Well, let's look in the dictionary as to what equity means. Equity means two things. It means fairness, and impartiality, fairness, and impartiality would mean as regarding our history is, we have a fair view of what we were doing in the past. And we don't, we don't hide that. We show it what as to what it is, and we don't have any partiality as to covering up things that people did that were evil, right. And then the third thing they want to do is remove inclusiveness while inclusiveness basically, is what makes any education in any educational institution really function. And succeed is is bringing people together in a community and in a climate where people can work together for common goals. And there's there's a, there was a kind of almost like a family or community feeling about, about that particular institution. Now, I've never been to the new college myself personally, but I've never spoken to them. I don't know about it. But certainly it sounds like a kind of ideal environment, for not only promoting people who are scholars in that sense, but also people who want to make who want to make positive change to make our society better,
Unknown Speaker 21:38
you know, crazy. New College is Florida's designated Honors College. So he previously, you know, higher ups in the Florida system of university education sort of understood what this college was about. And we're sort of free to let us do whatever it is we wanted to do it. So this is just so I mean, it just it was the perfect target. You've got a bunch of very identity and self identifying liberals who are very, very successful. And so how do you hit them in the heart, you got a bunch of Fulbright Scholars bunch of doctors, you have to write a thesis to graduate from this university at 20. You know, 21. So I just it was the perfect target, you got a really a bunch of really diverse, really smart liberal kids. And it's a gut punch and I Florida will be worse off for it. I
Unknown Speaker 22:22
agree. Well, let's let's move on now to a very bleak topic. And that's again, this this, this ongoing story of, of the murder of Tyree Nichols, and now into the in yesterday's paper in the New York Times having to do with the dissemination of photos taken by officers at the scene to people who were not a party to this applies this are connected to the police department. But I think I think a lot there's a lot of responsibility needs to also be weighed at the administration of that particular Police Department. And the idea basically, not only in Memphis, but in other cities across the country, that you could create units of people to go into into go into these neighborhoods, and basically be left on their own to do whatever they wanted to do without any kind of sanction or restriction and not expect that would that being the case, there weren't going to be situations like this. And of course, concurrent with that was yesterday's article about the number one, the number one cause of unjustified murder or homicide involving people who are in the police department are these traffic stops. And again, and again, and again, we see the same sorry, tale of somebody being stopped for minor traffic and fair fraction, and it leads to somebody. Right, yeah, leads to somebody being killed. So we have to look at that whole, we have to look at that whole dynamic. And just actually, what specifically can we do to change it? And I think, I think the time has really come for, for the federal government to get involved in our Congress to get involved in pulling together federal laws that speak to these problems. Because in this, in this particular case, the murder of this man, this was not an isolated case. No, they had been going they have been going into these neighborhoods for for a good while of time, and had an innumerable complaints against them. And no mobile complaints. Not
Unknown Speaker 24:44
surprised, but this is not, you know, that's not an unheard of situation, right? Where they received numerous complaints or nothing is done about it until someone's dead or until someone's assaulted her and stuff. Right.
Unknown Speaker 24:54
Right. And of course, you know, concurrently with that is the situation in New York now. When they had the Commission on when they were having these demonstrations, you know, concurrent with George Floyd and everything and the protests was it was it was a condemning report on the behavior of the police. Excessive force, excessive use of pepper spray, are hiding their credentials, not turning on their cameras. And and we need we need to have what I really think what we need to have is we need to have a special prosecutor, a special prosecutor that just deals with these kinds of issues. I don't think the Da da can do it anymore, because they're too tied into the law. And you need to get somebody as Molly saying this, you need to get somebody from the outside, who's going to come in and have the authority to make change, not to make recommendations to the police department, because with the police review boards in New York City, particularly nines between 90 and 95% of the recommendations for discipline they make are ignored. So you can't depend on that. You have to have somebody to an independent third body. Yeah, to have an independent third body was the force of law behind them. Right. And the power to make not recommendations but actual chain
Unknown Speaker 26:22
effect real actual distance. Yeah, demonstrable a tangible discipline. Right, exactly. So for our last topic, we want to spend the last few minutes here obviously, the State of the Union happened this week. And you know, here we are, on Thursday, we've had a little more time to reflect about what happened. And and I think we're, we're just floored, right, I think there's no other way to sort of describe what we saw the lack of decorum, the sort of lack of respect for positions of, you know, extreme power. It was nothing short of a comedy, almost what we saw it just to watch our elected officials act like they were at a comedy club in the slums versus, you know, what is the State of the Union for one of the most powerful countries in the world? absolutely shameful. absolutely shameful.
Unknown Speaker 27:14
Well, I there has been a coarsening of the discourse in our country for a while now. Right. And what's happened, unfortunately, is a bad behavior has been legitimatize. Correct. And in the case of the usual suspects, or, you know, parading their misbegotten wares in fur coats in fur coats, was was really was really a travesty. And we haven't you have a situation now in the house, where you have a man who's the Speaker of the House, who was who was a complete serf, right, he has no independence at all, no power really has no power, really, he's dependent on one or two votes to even remain a speaker. And so his what what he should be saying and what how we should be acting has been completely nullified. So he has to sit behind the president and across from the Vice President, to watch to watch this, instead of really what he should have done is say, Excuse me, Mr. President, I think that the members of my party are acting in a way that's completely disrespectful to you. Right. And I want to apologize to you for their for their misconduct. But that's not going to happen. And I think I think President Biden, to his credit, handled it about as well as he could. I
Unknown Speaker 28:38
think he handled it phenomenally, quite frankly, given the circumstances.
Unknown Speaker 28:42
I think so. I think but I think this is we're going to see over the next two years, more and more things like this happening. Because I think a lot of these people who are aligned with what that part of the Republican Party, they want to bring the whole thing down. I really believe I've thought it for a long time. They want to believe they want to bring our political system down. And they can they can do that. If they if they're able to primarily by disrupting our financial, our financial stability, our the institutional stability of our treasury, the institutional stability of the benefits that are paid out to people either through Medicare or Social Security. I really believe that
Unknown Speaker 29:29
well, and on that cheery note, we do have to say goodbye to you for the evening. If you do have any questions, comments or concerns about the show, be sure to email me at W e t h e l one@unlv.nevada.edu. And we'll see you next week.
Unknown Speaker 29:42
Thank you so much.
Unknown Speaker 29:43
Thank you for listening to our show. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at web one. That's w e t h e l one@nevada.unlv.edu. Or to contact Professor Charles Stanton, contact him at ch a Bart L E S That's Charles dot Stanton s t a n t o n@unlv.edu CNN axon
Transcribed by https://otter.ai